[42] Why our dictionary makers have taken into their heads to treat it as Tamĕsis I know not. The Welsh is Tafwys with a diphthong regularly representing an earlier long e or ei in the second syllable. There is, as far as I know, no reason to suppose Tafwys an invention, rather than a genuine vocable of the same origin as the name of the Glamorganshire river Taff, in Welsh Taf, which is also the name of the river emptying itself at Laugharne, in Carmarthenshire. Tafwys, however, does not appear to occur in any old Welsh document; but no such weakness attaches to the testimony of the French Tamise, which could hardly come from Tamĕsis: compare also the place-name Tamise near the Scheldt in East Flanders; this, however, may be of a wholly different origin. [↑]

[43] A more difficult version has been sent me by Dewi Glan Ffrydlas, of Bethesda: Caffed y wrach, ‘Let him seize the hag’; Methu’r cryfaglach, ‘You have failed, urchin.’ But he has not been able to get any explanation of the words at the Penrhyn Quarries. Cryfaglach is also the form in Mur y Cryfaglach, ‘the Urchin’s Wall,’ in Jenkins’ Beđ Gelert, p. 249. He informs me that this is the name of an old ruin on an elevated spot some twenty or thirty yards from a swift brook, and not far in a south-south-easterly direction from Sir Edward Watkin’s chalet. [↑]

[44] For this I am indebted to Mr. Wm. Davies (p. 147 above), who tells me that he copied the original from Chwedlau a Thrađodiadau Gwyneđ, ‘Gwyneđ Tales and Traditions,’ published in a periodical, which I have not been able to consult, called Y Gordofigion, for the year 1873. [↑]

[45] The meaning of the word mwthlach is doubtful, as it is now current in Gwyneđ only in the sense of a soft, doughy, or puffy person who is all of a heap, so to say. Pughe gives mwythlan and mwythlen with similar significations. But mwthlach would seem to have had some such a meaning in the doggerel as that of rough ground or a place covered with a scrubby, tangled growth. It is possibly the same word as the Irish mothlach, ‘rough, bushy, ragged, shaggy’; see the Vision of Laisrén, edited by Professor K. Meyer, in the Otia Merseiana, pp. 114, 117. [↑]

[46] The account here given of the Cyhiraeth is taken partly from Choice Notes, pp. 31–2, and partly from Howells, pp. 31–4, 56–7, who appears to have got uncertain in his narrative as to the sex of the Cyhiraeth; but there is no reason whatsoever for regarding it as either male or female—the latter alone is warranted, as he might have gathered from her being called y Gyhiraeth, ‘the Cyhiraeth,’ never y Cyhiraeth as far as I know. In North Cardiganshire the spectre intended is known only by another name, that of Gwrach y Rhibyn, but y Gyhiraeth or yr hen Gyhiraeth is a common term of abuse applied to a lanky, cadaverous person, both there and in Gwyneđ; in books, however, it is found sometimes meaning a phantom funeral. The word cyhiraeth would seem to have originally meant a skeleton with cyhyrau, ‘sinews,’ but no flesh. However, cyhyrau, singular cyhyr, would be more correctly written with an i; for the words are pronounced—even in Gwyneđ—cyhir, cyhirau. The spelling cyhyraeth corresponds to no pronunciation I have ever heard of the word; but there is a third spelling, cyheuraeth, which corresponds to an actual cyhoereth or cyhoyreth, the colloquial pronunciation to be heard in parts of South Wales: I cannot account for this variant. Gwrach y Rhibyn means the Hag of the Rhibyn, and rhibyn usually means a row, streak, a line—ma’ nhw’n mynd yn un rhibyn, ‘they are going in a line.’ But what exactly Gwrach y Rhibyn should connote I am unable to say. I may mention, however, on the authority of Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, that in Mid-Cardiganshire the term Gwrach y Rhibyn means a long roll or bustle of fern tied with ropes of straw and placed along the middle of the top of a hayrick. This is to form a ridge over which and on which the thatch is worked and supported: gwrach unqualified is, I am told, used in this sense in Glamorganshire. Something about the Gwrach sprite will be found in the Brython for 1860, p. 23a, while a different account is given in Jenkins’ Beđ Gelert, pp. 80–1. [↑]

[47] This statement I give from Choice Notes, p. 32; but I must confess that I am sceptical as to the ‘wings of a leathery and bat-like substance,’ or of any other substance whatsoever. [↑]

[48] For more about her and similar ancestral personages, see The Welsh People, pp. 54–61. [↑]

CHAPTER VIII

Welsh Cave Legends

Ἐκεῖ μέντοι μίαν εἶναι νῆσον, ἐν ᾗ τὸν Κρόνον καθεῖρχθαι φρουρούμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ Βριάρεω καθεύδοντα· δεσμὸν γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸν ὕπνον μεμηχανῆσθαι, πολλοὺς δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν εἶναι δαίμονας ὀπαδοὺς καὶ θεράποντας.—Plutarch.